Friday, November 04, 2011

WAIK: Create Windows Pre-installation Environment image

Windows Pre-installation Environment (WinPE) is a lightweight version of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Vista that is used for the deployment of workstations and servers. It is intended as a 32-bit or 64-bit replacement for MS-DOS during the installation phase of Windows, and can be booted via PXE, CD-ROM, USB flash drive or hard disk.

WinPE contains limited Windows API library that is enough for the installation of Windows operating system using familiar Windows GUI interface.

Windows Automated Installation Kit

Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) is a free tool that may prepare a WinPE image. It has a GUI tool – Windows System Image Manager that allow user create an answer for unattended installation. Most usage of WAIK tools is via command line. Installation of WAIK is easy and straight forward.

Prepare a plain WinPE image

WinPE image is a file with extension .wim. In this example, we use a WAIK command line tools to create WinPE image. There is a special console shell available in WAIK tools: “Deployment Tools Command Prompt”

Make changes to WinPE image

Prepare a WinPE image with Windows Recovery Environment

The plain WinPE image doesn’t contain Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). The WinPE with WinRE allows us to recover damage or corrupt Windows installation. It is a handy environment for system administrator.

The windows installation DVD or ISO image file include Windows Recovery Environment WinPE image. We may grep a ready WinPE image from it.

Locate a file install.wim under DVD:\\sources folder of installation tree:

Add drivers into WinPE image

Both the plain or WinRE WinPE image contain basic drivers that is just enough to boot up machine. In network deployment environment, the network adapters is an important devices that should be configured once boot up with WinPE or else the subsequent network operation will fail.